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Cal's got hot knees! The children keep on singing Cal's a hot tease! The grown-ups keep on screaming She's so goddamn unpredictable! So throw her to the lion's den! Is what we all keep thinking So I never learned "say please" In a way that means "I love you" It's common courtesy And Cal's got hot knees And Cal's got mean cold drunk blues Too But I won't say I TOLD YOU SO Is what I keep on thinking And what I keep on drinking And Lord I wish I was dreaming But instead I keep on sleeping Hey, yeah, yea Hey, yeah, yea Hey, yeah, yea Hey Cal's got hot knees Cal's got hot knees (x4) Is what we keep on thinking And we keep on drinking It's what we keep on thinking And what i Keep on drinking And Lord I wish we were dreaming But we're all still probably sleeping

Cal

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Looks like I'm going to London I can't afford the ticket Thank God for credit cards And capitalism! I can't see my lover in London No I'll be far too busy Taking in the air Running from you there You're in America It won't be like San Franicisco When you yelled at me on the docks And I thought "My God, how can I get off this land? "Out of America?" I can't recognize ya You or America Neither one Turns out I'm going to London Still can't afford the ticket I'm leaving any second Oh I'm letting you letting you letting you go 'Cause I'm headed I'm headed I'm headed to go To London I'm off to London I'm coming London Soon, London

Soon, London

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I could've sworn, Thought I saw the daylight Dancing 'cross the wall But now I'm torn In the thaw of this cold night Tried to have it all I kept on dreaming But never said 'amen' Amen Amen

Amen

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You say I'm blowing this to pieces Gonna burn it down So I don't die You think your closeness to god increases When you tear up this town You come alive That's what happens When Papa When Papa comes 'round When Papa comes 'round When Papa comes 'round He really really comes around You're posted down there in Texas The land of the free Where no one's no one's nexux When you're protected by democracy That's what'll happen If you let You let your Papa Let Papa come 'round Pap come 'round He'll really really come around Cause I guess it's over Streetlight theatrics didn't work out in our favor But I still kept all the roses You couldn't claim them You couldn't swear if you tried And you said I'm blowing this to pieces Gonna burn it down So we don't die So let Papa come 'round He'll really really really come around Whoa Let Papa come 'round Let Papa come 'round He'll really really really come around

Papa Come Round (Waco, Texas)

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Oh I'm just looking out for me There's something you can't see I hid it in my pocket Don't ask about it drop it Oh you're trying to unlock it You're such a beast You should just go ask Mr. Jones I'm pretty sure he knows Pretty sure pretty sure And I'm just looking out for me You forgot how to breathe You're still here in my pocket I couldn't ever drop it Now you're trying to unlock it You're such a beast

Go Ask Mr. Jones

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I am standing at the edge of a ghost town near San Francisco Where you've been waiting on the dock Waiting to get off And my hands began to shiver gripped by the waterside in the misty bay Where you kept asking me to stay Forever and ever and ever and I could never say no And still I wondered "Where does he go at night?" I can't explain this heart of mine I can't forget the grit and grime You must be angry all the time And I'm so sorry for that You're still standing at the edge of a ghost town you built in San Francisco And you're still waiting on the dock Don't you know? I got off I leapt off I'm off"

Standing at the Edge (of a Ghost Town Near San Francisco)

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Hurricane

Morning will break soon enough Though it is best if there ain’t much Much to expect from the day In case it is gray I might’ve slept thru the point You tried to make while a joint Hung oh-so gently from your mouth Over and out And ain’t it a shame? There’s no one to blame The world is a windmill inside A hurricane Away, away Sometimes I feel gray I’m not a freeloading man I try to earn all I can I don’t expect anything from my lover But color color color And ain’t it a shame You’re not to blame For my heart spinning circles inside of my chest While a hurricane Lives on in shame And speaks to my name For the world churns like butter It’s salty and sweet What can I say Except for today?

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Hope (In the Catskills)

Somewhere I heard hope lives in the Catskills Where there ain’t frills to the wind As it runs through the hills toward the sun As it copes Right on my windowsill As the chill of November Threatens like a hit and run But I keep seeing you Tumbling over and over the blue And I know I misspoke When I made that bad joke In lieu of your silence And I know that you’re there, Though I don’t know where there is Do you? I just know that you’re tumbling Over and over the blue Blue I wrote you this song So that you’d sing along And I dare you to sing it as loud as you can In the air C’mon, c’mon Where did it go wrong? You lost your head Remember I said you would? And I keep seeing you Tumbling over and over the blue And I know I misspoke When I made that bad joke In lieu of your silence But I know that you’re there, Though I don’t know where there is, Do you? I just know that you’re tumbling Over and over the blue Still I heard hope Lives in the Catskills Where there ain’t frills to the wind But I keep seeing you Tumbling over and over and over the blue And I know I misspoke When I made that bad joke In lieu In lieu of your silence And I know that you’re there, Though I don’t know where there is, Do you? I just know that you’re tumbling Over and over and over and over The blue Blue I heard hope Lives in the Catskills...

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Dear Nick

Dear Nick,

I’m on a bus headed to New York City. Today I have rehearsal with Rachel; she’s going to be singing a full concert of my music at Rockwood Music Hall tomorrow night. Full band and all. I can’t wait. You always said that you wanted to hear her sing live. Maybe I’ll see you there tomorrow.

In order to be able to write this, I put on Joni Mitchell’s 2000 re-recording of “Both Sides Now” because it reminds me of you. Do you remember that fight we got in that one time? The one that concluded with you coming back to your apartment with a used DVD copy of Love Actually, which I’d never seen, that we watched in silence until the end when we were snuggled up on your couch, and everything was okay? I know it’s tacky to like that movie, but I like it because of you. I don’t just like it; I love Love Actually.

I don’t know where Beaux Bear is, but he’s somewhere in my new house -- I moved to New Paltz, in with my fiancee Bryan -- did I tell you that? I couldn’t have. We hadn’t spoken in a year or so.

I thought of you a month ago when I bought a car in East Haven; Bryan and I drove right past your parents’ house on Green Street in Milford. As we drove by-- the highway towering over the train station in Milford where you picked me up the first time I visited your family in Connecticut and was so scared-- I pulled up Google Maps, and there it was: Green Street. So close to the water-- and the docks. You really loved the docks, and you showed me where you’d gone to “blow off steam” in high school, just like you went to blow off steam on Friday night when you drove down to Manhattan-- right to the George Washington Bridge, the poetic martyr that you are-- where you parked your car, left your things inside, and found your peace, embraced by my favorite body of water in the world: the Hudson. Right near my old apartment on Riverside Drive, the apartment where I decided that I needed to make a change in life, turn it around, fight my demons, and become sober. My old sanctuary which now also served as yours too.

What the fuck were you thinking?

You didn’t think I’d find out, did you? I found out. Steph called me. Me, first, before anyone else. Almost immediately. A totally cool move on her part. I can only expect that your family, though they’ve lost touch with me, would’ve done the same. Your mom, sweet, sweet Jackie, always told me that I was welcome in your house and home, and I took that to heart. I found out. Of course I found out.

Your timing couldn’t have been worse either, Bello. It really, truly, couldn’t have been worse. I found out on Thursday that another old friend passed, and I’d completely missed it because it was just one of those things that went untended because I made a choice, a long time ago, to live a life on the East Coast and make my home here because that’s what I wanted. Jordan understands, I know he does. He was always understanding.

I’m not that understanding. In fact, what I can’t understand is the fact that I’m so mad at you right now. I’m so, so, so fucking mad.

And truthfully, I have no right to be. It’s not like I tried that hard to keep in touch after the last time I saw you. You and I, in our childish throws of stubbornness, weren’t even friends on Facebook, still, not even after having reunited in New York City a couple of years ago. You took me out to lunch on the Upper West Side, to apologize. It was a beautiful day. We sat outside. We walked to Central Park. We walked through the park. To this day, I still can’t tell if you swallowed your tears because you wanted to or because you had to because seeing me hurt so much, but you wanted to save face because you wanted to do it for me.

That was your style too. You always, no matter how fucked up your heart felt, did things for me because you truly, truly loved me and my brain and my heart. And I loved you and yours. And I still do.

Even after everything. South Korea. Mass Ave. / Storrow Drive. Westland Avenue and the back alley. Even after everything, we met, and you were nervous. I wish I’d known then what I know now. You didn’t think. You never did.

In fact, I don’t think you took your own life. I cannot accept it. It was something else. Something else stole you from us. The force, whomever it was, that dragged you down to NYC on Friday to make peace. That wasn’t you. That was the side of you who, in all of your power and care, refused to let people see. And when, every once in awhile, someone had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting that other thing that lived inside you, with all of your might you tried desperately to run away. I used to think that you yourself were running away from the problem, that you couldn’t face certain situations we found ourselves in when we fought or when you were upset, but now I know: you were trying, fervently, to avoid introducing that other thing to the rest of us. You would go for days without speaking to me, and I would drive myself mad. But now I know: you did that because you thought introducing me to that thing inside you would hurt me.

Because even you were scared of it.

I am completely, thoroughly, totally 100% dumbfounded by all of this. I cannot stop shaking my head and saying “What?” to the sky. I just need to say that as it comes. I cannot believe this. I’ve heard people say those kinds of things when shit goes down, “I can’t believe it, I’m numb, this can’t be happening,” but until you really experience certain situations, you can’t comprehend how people can’t digest certain stuff. I get it now.

Do you remember the time you jumped off the bridge off Mass Ave. onto Storrow Drive? I remember the drizzle. I remember night time. I shouldn’t have chased you. I should’ve let you go, but I am a talker. I need to talk things out. I need to say what’s on my mind, or I go nuts. But you couldn’t. You needed to be away from people, me included, because that other thing was creeping up inside you and was possessing you, and you had no control over it but to run. Truth be told, I don’t remember what any of our fights were about specifically. Even themes are hazy now: but I’m sensitive, so I can imagine your sometimes curt way of speaking got to me in certain moments. You didn’t mean to; it just wasn’t for me. Which is probably why we finally called it quits in the end, but how are you supposed to stop loving someone who you just love so much you could fly? I’d never felt that before, not for anyone. Not until I met you.

I think I fell in love with you when we broke more rules and bought beer in Beacon Hill that one day and took the beer to the Longfellow Bridge and climbed up over that part of the bridge where they were doing construction and sat out on the ledge, our legs dangling over the Charles River, and we talked about this and that and laughed, and I knew I loved you then.

Because-- and surely I’ve told you this-- at the end of the day, you got it. As much as I could drive you mad, which I did (and vice versa), you loved me. Wholeheartedly. You respected me and my talents and my vision and my goals and my soul. It ignited something in you, even if it didn’t last or couldn’t last. I saw it. I saw you, in your repression, light up when you’d talk about writing and performing. It came as no surprise to me that you toured with that slam poetry group, around the country, sharing your work, the year after we graduated. Boy oh boy: was I proud of you. You were really doing what you wanted. You were flying, soaring through the air, using your succinct words and beautiful heart to carry you to distant lands, to see things you never dreamt you’d see and doing things you never dreamt you’d do. I kept tabs. I always kept tabs on you, Bello, even when I couldn’t stalk you up-close. That’s what my love for you did. I never cared that people told me that I should just keep you out of my life after all that had happened did; that’s not how it worked for me.

That wasn’t my style. I even wrote a song about it.

Bello I forgot to ask you How is California shaping up these days? I heard you moved there in September After our last December Drifted far away

But just so you know I packed you up Inside my suitcase heart

When I go to your funeral, I will go with the full, suitcase heart I’ve always had for you because I saw you, and you know that I saw you. It was the first time anyone really had. You told me that yourself.

In all your pain, under all your demons, through all the gray madness and anger and sadness that washed over you, day after day, month after month, despite any mistakes you made or people you hurt or things you said that you didn’t mean, I saw you.

And to be honest, this might be the first time that I see you even closer than I ever thought possible. You were my confidant, and I was yours, and nothing could ever change that. Not time, not distance, not even silence, that solemn, effervescent black hole of sound that sometimes rippled through and between you and me.

Because under all of it lay your heart and brain and everything else in-between, which you decided-- you chose-- to show me when you did. Because you knew, and I knew, that it was safe with me.

It will always, always, always be safe with me, Dear Bello. Handsome, beautiful, sweet, wonderful man. All those things you gave to me to keep safe: they’re safe. I packed them up. And that will never change.

Do you see it? I see it now, as my bus plows through New Jersey. I can see the tops of the George Washington Bridge, spires climbing high to the stars, stairs up to where you needed to go. I don’t see anybody falling into the murky waters below. All I see is a shadow, winking at me, skyrocketing up to the stars. All I see is you.

And your Beaux loves you.

Something’s lost and something’s gained In living every day

Yours, Blake

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Stephen's Song

Stephen was a man Who I once knew He claimed he had a piece of land Just outside of New Rochelle See, I'd been living out a plan, And I was passing through Poughkeepsie, one bag in my hand Thinking that I knew it all so well Well, he sat there at the counter Drinking coffee Reading pages of instructions That he'd penned himself And what seemed a chance encounter Was surely meant to be, Or at least that's the conclusion That I've invented for myself Oh, the whispers that he knew And in those trees, Magic in the breeze Built up around his piece under the blue Trees, that until he met me Only he could see Stephen was a man Who I once knew He claimed he had a piece of land Just outside of New Rochelle... - B. McGrath/B. Pfeil

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I know you're cooped up.

Wrapped up.

That must be tough.

It must be scary and lonely and filled with your thoughts having nowhere to go. 

Except maybe to bounce off the light reflecting on the snow outside. If there is snow outside. 

And I wouldn't know if there is snow outside where you are right now because I don't want to call you because I'm still really mad at you.

I'm sure you're probably pretty mad at me too.

But even through the unmitigated confusion and hurt, I can safely say that if I were hanging inside your brain, Swinging from its rafters, And if I had walked all those years in those old sneakers, And if I had seen the things that you've seen Which made you believe the things you believe And trust those things that you hold to be true-- As true as your notion of God, And who he is, Or she, Or it-- And if I were able to hold them in my palms just like you do, Then maybe, just maybe I'd have a glimpse of why you find faith in the things you do. 

 But the fact of the matter is that I've never walked in your shoes because that's simply not possible.

So Atticus Finch, get a life.

Because that's impossible.

You can't walk a mile in another man's shoes. They're his. He needs them. He needs them to walk and protect the skin underneath his feet so that he can move through the world in order to honor his own demons.

But: it's not impossible to keep trying, Keep trying to do just that, every day, Trying to walk in his shoes.

Maybe he doesn't have any.

Maybe they were stolen from him.

Maybe a storm of ice and fire ripped them from his feet and left him with nothing.

I don't know.

How could I? I'm too small. There are too many people to count.

I don't know.

But here and now, for the globe to read if they find this somehow, I renew a solemn vow I made years ago, even though sometimes I forget: I will keep trying, how my heart in its deepest, most sacred room knows how.

That's what I mean when I say the word "love" to you.

So instead, as a sacrifice, I will offer up love for you, locked inside your big, scary, empty, lonely fortress, Maybe surrounded by wind and snow, Maybe creaky and pensive, Too pensive for even the sanest, rational human beings, And definitely too pensive for those who have blemishes on their brains and lungs and their hearts.

Because I know your heart is really big, And I know your heart is really genuine, And I know your heart is really sad too, And I know this because we have the same eyes, And I know this because we have the same hands, And I know this because I see you.

I see you. I know. Because I belong to you the way that you belong to me too because that's how it happened when the star dust exploded and crossed all the galaxies in all directions and found ground here, on Earth, and created seas and mountains and rivers and deserts and lakes and forests --and people-- Who started making new people, Just like you made me, Just like you raised me, Just like you taught me to think for myself, And feel for myself, And fend for myself, And let my brain do the thinking, And let my heart do the talking, And let my walk do the walking.

For my faith is in that gift you gave me, all three pieces of it, wrapped up in mercy and joy and hope, And the sheer guts to believe that it is possible to see God in everyone, Everyone, Everyone.

And while we figure and rationalize and conjugate those self-evident truths differently, You and I are too much the same to let a hurricane make the wreckage, Or an avalanche cover up our own wreckage. It's our wreckage to honor together. Nobody else's.

We're too much the same.

And so, for the sake of my cavernous, canyon-wide, sky-infinite love for you, I say: I'm sorry.

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The Time Carrie Fisher Almost Got Me Fired, Then Saved My Job

As the first donut crumb fell out of Carrie Fisher’s mouth, bounced, and landed delicately on the $40,000 mixing board, my puppy-dog eyes slowly panned up to the window that peeked into the small studio at Boston’s WERS, 88.9 FM and became locked into a terrifying gaze with Jack Casey, the solemn general manager of the award-winning radio station headquartered at Emerson College. Jack barely flinched, but I saw the fury in his eyes, as he’d specifically asked me to make sure that the box of Dunkin Donuts Ms. Fisher toted did not enter the studio.

But what was I supposed to do? There she was, Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia herself: much shorter than I had imagined, an accomplished actress/writer/philanthropist, daughter of Hollywood royalty Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, gracing the presence of our small but widely-respected college radio station to talk to me, an acne-infested musical theatre major who was one month shy of 21 – and who had virtually zero experience interviewing people, much less celebrities with household names as bold and fonted as Carrie Fisher. And right before she had arrived, she began to feel faint - and decided she needed sugar. And right before I walked her into the tiny room to sit down in front of microphones and discuss her latest theatrical creation Wishful Drinking– a one-woman show that chronicles selective and insane highlights of her bizarre life– she had asked her assistant scurry off to buy some treats at the Dunkin Donuts near the radio station. And because she was on an extremely tight schedule, the only time she had to eat and crank up the volume on her blood sugar would be during our interview. And because I was and still am such a people-pleaser-baby, especially when it comes to intimidating personalities like that of Carrie Fisher, I caved when she coyly begged that I let her bring the box of donuts into the studio with her. And as I saw the crumb dangling from her lip by a thread, I thought to myself: Get a napkin. Tell her she has a crumb holding on her face for dear life. Just. Do. Something. But I didn’t. And I couldn’t. And the glazed donut crumb slipped off the ledge of her lip and tumbled down, almost in slow motion, down, down, down, and it gently ricocheted off the console, an inch into the air before it reentered the board airspace, where it politely rested its weary bones onto the sleek, silver surface, directly between two modules near the south side of the giant audio control center.

She didn’t even notice, as she was mid-sentence, discussing her obsession with electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT as she so lovingly described it. But her assistant did. Through that window with laser eyes, the assistant whose name I’ve regretfully forgotten, kept watch on the dormant donut crumb, as it napped on the radio console– and standing right behind him was Jack Casey, whose equally-as-sharp laser eyes were perched on mine, attempting to kill me through the glass with his infuriated gaze. I felt my stomach flip completely upside-down, and I knew right then and there: this would most likely be the last interview I’d get to conduct at WERS.

So be it. I’m talking to Carrie Fisher, I thought. Fire me. And until that probable fateful moment when they would most certainly revoke my station badge, I decided that I had to continue the interview. It was my job. I couldn’t let a mere donut crumb get me down. And so proceeded our awkward yet strangely endearing conversation: Blake Pfeil, a doe in headlights, side by side with the electric, enigmatic, effervescent Carrie Fisher. Charismatic as the sun burns brightly, she was attentive, gentle, and wildly forgiving of my clear lack of skill as I bumbled about to remember pitiful, boring, predictable questions I’d penned the night before in a sleepless panic. At one point, I even blurted out that my dad was “a huge fan of hers,” which I know came off as visibily star-fucker-ish, but she responded with a laugh and a smile, cracking some joke about whether or not he was single and could she please have his number? She filled every unbearable moment with all-too-innately charming sensibilities, a true professional who had undoubtedly endured hundreds of near-repeat interviews, faced with all of the same dull questions, answered with all of the same brilliant answers– each passing interview with the potential for a new joke or two to break through the surface by her quick wit and cunning ability to calm even the most anxiety-ridden of novice broadcasters, like myself.

I’m sure if I listened back to that tape, I’d be mortified. The number of times I stumbled through choppy sentences; the array of hopeless silences in which I “um’d” and “uh’d” to find our next topic; the sheer fact that I don’t think I breathed once throughout the entire interview. Yet Ms. Fisher remained focused, willing to answer every question I underhand tossed in her direction. Not but a moment after the donut crumb discovered its new home on the console, I had already forgotten that I would most likely be fired shortly thereafter. This was all due to her: eccentric, but knowingly so. Sarcastic, but reasonably so. Irreverent, but balanced by a great, big wink. I was in awe. Never in my life had a stranger and I so candidly discussed the morose, cruel facts of life through such a bold, absurd, humorous lens. But that was just her genius: the ability to take real, sustainable tragedies in such a grand, unimaginable spectrum and drastically morph them into hilarious, tell-all romps that beg no favors, request no sympathies, and above all poo-poo apologies. It was her art: tell the truth, the gritty, dirty, unbelievable truth with a deadly comedic twist that scoffed at her demons with a reflective acceptance. Born into a reality that was the lights and cameras following her parents’ (and thusly her) every step, Carrie Fisher, through years of struggling with addiction and depression, had the utter guts and dignity to admit what most of us are afraid to admit: life is precious, life is weird, and life is really stupid.

As our air-time together drew to a close– and just as I had become to (finally) feel comfortable chatting with Princess Leia– the admission of losing my job began to creep back into my periphery, and I began to feel the fear pain prance back into my stomach. The interview concluded, and I switched off the microphones. In the fifteen seconds that I had to spare alone with nobody able to hear but Carrie Fisher, I did the only thing I could do that could possibly save my job: I turned to her and whispered: “Please. My boss is going to fire me. He asked me to keep the donuts out of the room. I’m so sorry. Please.” She looked at me with a face only a mother could make, and she whispered back, “Don’t worry.”

We left the room to greet a photographer and a couple other station executives and students. With the mighty presence of a truly trained Hollywood star, Ms. Fisher shook hands and laughed and joked and took fun pictures with me, all while keeping a soft grip on my shoulder. At first I was confused as to why she wouldn’t let go of me, but as most of the people cleared the hallway, and as the only souls who lingered were Ms. Fisher, two students, Jack Casey, and me, her intentions suddenly became abundantly clear. Jack approached us and said through gritted teeth, “Blake–” Without missing a beat, Ms. Fisher interrupted and smiled: “Jack, I’m Carrie. So nice to meet you. Can I be frank? This is one of the best interviews I’ve ever had to bear. Blake is so smart and sweet. You’re lucky to have him on-board. Oh! And I almost forgot: so sorry about the donuts. I’m a bad girl, you see. That wasn’t Blake, that’s on me. Forgive him, please?” And with that she put her hand on his shoulders and grinned. Jack was speechless. She turned back to me with a wink: “Thanks again for everything, Blake, and come find me at the stage door when you come see the show.” She kissed my cheek, and spun around with her assistant at her heels, and with that she was gone.

Astonished, Jack and I watched her fly off into the great, big world. After a moment of pause, Jack turned back to me and said, “When I ask you to do something, please do it. Got it?” “Got it,” I replied. He walked off. Done and done. Job still intact.

I never did go find her at the stage door. I felt strange about doing it. I didn’t know her. I learned the same things from my conversation with her that she’d shared with thousands of other people, on and off stage. But that was just it: her whole life was a stage, and she knew it, and rather than jump off and say, “No thanks,” she stuck through it, a real craftswoman and honest-to-goodness person, with the keenest understanding of life that I’ve yet to encounter again. It was during that half hour with Ms. Fisher that I found the beginnings of learning to laugh at myself, scratched the surface on what truly matters in life, and above all, began to comprehend what I want to get out of creating art: tell the truth. Then laugh at the truth because it’s really stupid. Then tell the truth again. And repeat.

Rest in peace, Princess. And thanks for saving my job. Even though you almost cost it in the first place. If I had been fired, it would’ve been worth it.

[stopthistrain-bp]

What the dogs from the GAP, Barb from Stranger Things, and My Childhood Frenemy Al Taught Me About Coolness (or, Three Years Sober)

When I started sixth grade, I had already begun to develop a distinct personal sense of style which enabled me to curate a fairly simple and reasonable wardrobe. Nothing fancy, just the basics: jeans, t-shirts, shoes. Standard and straightforward. Well. Actually, if I’m going to be completely honest here– and I intend to be because we’re such good friends now– my closet of clothes employed a specific theme, and that theme was of a fully canine persuasion. What I mean to say is that I wore a lot of shirts with dogs on them. Around the time I commenced my middle school studies, the GAP had released a line of unisex clothing that featured plain white short and long sleeve shirts that boasted B&W photographs of very regal looking dogs as generic and Americana as dogs can get. I owned probably four or five of these. I wore them constantly. I liked how cute all the dogs looked on the shirts. I thought the vintage-inspired photographs were neat-o. As an avid animal lover, it was a privilege for me to wake up every morning and wriggle into another one of those puppies and wag it around Mountain Ridge Middle School. While my fashion sense wasn’t necessarily the “coolest,” it was mine which made it cool on account of the no-fear attitude I deployed when wearing them. I dotted around in half-priced jeans and bargain sneakers and kept my hair disproportionately groomed in a wretched bowl cut that made my already large head look larger and framed my face in a certain light that eerily resembled Mary Badham’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of Scout Finch. Nonetheless: I liked how I looked. I never thought twice about it. I’d strut my stuff around the clinical forest green and cream cinder block hallways at Mountain Ridge, satisfied in knowing that I was making a statement about my love for animals and their rights. While most kids showcased an uninspired and rather congregate visual aesthetic in Jnco jeans and Vans, I kept my cool in GAP shirts that presented beautiful snaps of Golden Retrievers and Black Labs. It worked for me because it made me feel my absolute best self, so I continued the trend well into sixth grade, unrelenting, unabashed, and unafraid of certain, curt remarks bullies hurled at me. And so it was written, the doggies protected me. It was in sixth grade when I heard the word “faggot” for the first time. One afternoon, I wandered the hallways with my friend – let’s call him Al, a none-too-clever pseudonym I’ll use as he and I are friends on Facebook, and (hopefully) he might read this. Al and I had been best friends in elementary school– but then I switched schools and finished 5th grade at Academy International, across town, and our friendship temporarily expired, though we still lived in the same neighborhood. Al’s family was from Spain, and he and his sister (we’ll call her Polly, another unenthused alias) were both neighbors. Early into our friendship, Polly had introduced me to Hanson as she blasted “Mmbop” on loop at their house. She hung posters in her room of the three brothers, their Biblically long hair dangling to the floor, deliberately unkempt and messy, almost in-between hybrids of the late boy band era and post-’90s alternative rock movement. I remember feeling weirdly interested in them, like I could kiss them! I just didn’t know what that meant, that feeling. Oddly, I also felt the same way about Al, and I had experienced similar, bizarre feelings towards my friend Jonny too. And Erik. And Jay. (All of these names have also been “changed.”) I was a kid, so I couldn’t have known what those pings and pangs in my lil heart were at the time. In the early years of elementary, Al and I did everything together. We had sleepovers, played outside, and were the best of friends. We talked the same, laughed the same, and our shared pedestrian fashion sense was the freedom to wear whatever outfits our mothers scraped together and tossed us in. When middle school rolled around, there was Al again, but he looked different. His hair was done up gel and hairspray that smelled like the Cost Cutters in the Chapel Hills Mall next to Dillard’s. He wore fancy t-shirts with name brands like American Eagle and Aeropostale and pulsed the fluorescent corridors at Mountain Ridge in jeans that were slightly baggy and free and had lots of zipper pockets. I admired him. I liked the sense of confidence that he’d gained since we’d last spoken. There was something different about his attitude towards me too. Suddenly, he was this super intense whisperer. He’d hiss secrets to me, mean and nasty comments about fellow students as we’d walk by them in the hall. He’d tell me how excited he was to get out of America and go to Spain. The way Al described it, people here in the US of A had it all backwards, and the folks in Spain were the ones who totally “got it.” He also made sure to make me feel my clothes weren’t cool enough, secondhand in essence to the fashionable collections in Spain. During the initial phases on the timeline of his taunts, I didn’t think anything of it, but as the school year wore on and my voice started cracking and my face started exploding in large zits – the kind that turn your skin red and are super painful – the more susceptible I became to feeling crummy as Al lorded over me and spit remarks about how stupid I looked in my clothes. The more he wore me down, the more I felt the need to defend myself – and impress him at the same time. I started wearing the dog shirts less and less, and I slowly faded into a combo of anger/sadness inside but flowered into a mixture of joking/composed on the outside. Al’s self-assuredness and ferocity took ahold of me and had me under its control: the textbook spell of a good bully. Nevertheless, we were still buddies, and to me that was ultimately all that mattered, so I let his behavior slide because I still craved and cherished his friendship. If I couldn’t be cool, I could at least be best friends with the coolest person at school. That particular afternoon, as we aimlessly dragged our feet around school after the bell rang, we engaged in a fruitful conversation about girls we thought were hot. I named a few, and he named a few, and it just so happened that one of the few we both named was the same: Alexandra. (By now you’re probably aware that this too is a fabricated name that isn’t really far off from her actual name because Facebook.) My dim history with Alexandra had stretched back to a year prior when Alexandra had told me, surrounded by a gang of girls in the schoolyard at Academy International Elementary, that she would never date "a boy like me" because I was “too ugly for a girl like her.” While her own face was a genetic concession that only a mother could adore– its prominent feature a hook nose like Pinocchio on his third or fourth lie– she stared me down those menacing nostrils and made sure I knew that I wasn’t good-looking enough to “go out with her.” She and the girls laughed and shuffled away. After that moment I was filled with unmitigated determination to prove her wrong and get her to go out with me– although looking back that is actually hilarious because all I really would’ve required as her boyfriend was that she and I go shopping together. Honestly, Alexandra, if you and your husband and children are reading this, I don’t think it would’ve been too much to ask. When middle school arrived, and I had my new look in GAP dogwear, I knew it was only a matter of time until Alexandra and I would be a full arm’s-length away from each other, swaying uncomfortably at the spring dance in the cafeteria near the salad bar stations. And yet when her name exited Al’s mouth after it had already departed mine, I felt my stomach drop, ka-boom. Al was cooler than I. Alexandra would want to go out with Al. Two Als. (AA. Foreshadowing?) No Blake. I felt my forehead get hot and my face prickle numb. “Alexandra?” I replied. He nodded. What followed was a vivid twenty seconds of my life that I will never forget. Forgive me: the next bit of dialogue is paraphrased, but in effect the conversation sounded something like this: Al: And Alexandra. Blake: Alexandra? Al: (nod) Blake: Oh. Al: She’s my number one. Blake: Mine too. Al: I’d suggest Julia (this name change is the worst one yet. I didn’t even bother changing her name. Just the spelling.) Blake: Julia? Al: She’s more likely to go for you. Blake: Why do you say that? Al: She’s more in your league than Alexandra. Blake: League? Al: More on your level. Blake: I think I could go out with her. Al: She wouldn’t want to date you. Blake: Sure she would. Al: No. You’re not cool enough. Blake: Yes I am. Al: No you’re not. You wear those stupid dog shirts all the time. Blake: Well! Your hair looks like a methed-out porcupine! (I didn’t know what meth was.) Al: Honestly, Blake, that dog shirt you’re wearing makes you look like a fag. Fag. There it was, in big, bold letters, out in front of my face, like Al’d taken an extra-thick Sharpie and tattooed the air with it. F-A-G. Three letters in succession that didn’t yet mean anything to me, but I could tell that they weren’t three letters in sequence that were going to make me feel spectacular anytime soon. I felt the skin on my face pulse into a deep red. Al stood there, blank expression, waiting for me to respond although I didn’t know what the word meant. (Later I’d ask another friend, and he’d relay the definition, and I’d feel so uncool that it would take years to get it back.) I can honestly pinpoint that exchange as the moment when I evaporated into myself and tapped into my innate sense of self-loathing (which, consequently, tapped into the pre-phases of alcoholism.) I unearthed sarcasm and began talking shit as a mode of survival, in order to cover up my own sense of discomfort with who I was. I retreated inside, deep down a winding well, and at the bottom I found a home inside a super crummy place, the Land of Self-Hatred, where so many cool people are forced to descend and reside because their spines aren’t genetically equipped to combat bullies. The L.O.S.H. presented itself as the only viable emotional sanctuary that felt totally safe, at least until I took my first swig of booze years later. I was able to imagine solace there while purveying the landscape for others who also dwelled inside the 360 degree walled confines of the LOSH. Over the years I’ve met many friends inside the LOSH, folks who know what it means to feel persecuted for being who they are. Nobody talks to each other down in there, but they see each other, barely lifting the veils they wear as the drudge around inconsequentially, feeling abandoned and alone. People who haven’t ever had to journey there can’t possibly comprehend the dark neighborhood that is the LOSH. The streetlights are burned out, (or perhaps they never found electricity in the first place), and the only thing you see besides the never-ending black tunnels and caverns and canyons are the other souls who live there too. Of course, as I got older and started to wake up a bit, I began finding places other than the LOSH to visit, hotspots where there seemed to be more light and sound and color, oftentimes where alcohol flowed. With age I began to meet more people who thought like me and saw the world as I did. They weren’t LOSH residents either. They were in the real world, or they had either never vacationed to the LOSH, or they had already left it. They made me feel good about the possibility of coming back to the person who lived up and out of the well. It’s incredible; the only thing that grows underground are roots, and those roots, while complex and stunning in their own right, have no access to sun and color the way the flowers do, to which the roots stay attached, as they ramble downward, no potential upward motion possible. It’s only until the flowers bloom that the roots’ full potential and purpose becomes evident. Now, at the ripe age of 28 years old, I feel like I’m nearly to that place of 100% rooted self-love, but it’s not always easy. I sometimes experience the same aches and pains that I felt under the banner of Al’s hypnotic authority. Last week I received a package for a t-shirt I ordered. It was not a dog shirt. It was a shirt that featured a wonderful drawing of Barb from Netflix’s Stranger Things. Like the rest of the cool people on the planet, I binge watched the show, then I started over and watched the whole thing again. As an obsessor of most things horror, it spoke to me like an illustrative love-letter to all my favorite masters: Stephen King, Stephen Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock. These are the storytellers who, although they never knew it, became my only true friends after I retreated into myself because someone told me that the dog shirts just weren’t cool. When I folded into my solitude, I found these new friends, mentors who without ever speaking to me, directly made me feel better about who I was and why I am that way. I discovered through the macabre of horror that it might be okay to be different. It was normal to feel as though nobody is paying attention or listening to you, like Jimmy Stewart’s LB Jeffries in Rear Window, sole witness to the crime of murder, the single voice seeking justice; or like Danny in The Shining, mauled by an invisible force he can’t explain, except through a little man named Tony who Danny decides lives in his finger; or Elliot in ET, who finds his best friend in an alien. Or Barb. Barb with the high-waisted pants and the big face and the large glasses and the trapper keeper and the ruffled blouse. These characters are the heroes who brought me closer to the mirror of myself and made me start to realize that I was cool enough. It took years of battling with depression and alcohol, but through the struggle I maintained a fervent sense of hope with the help of my fictional heroes. Like Barb. When my Barb t-shirt landed in my hands, I took it to the bathroom at my job and tried it on. I smiled first; I liked it. It felt good and looked good. Then suddenly old Blake appeared behind me in the mirror. He looked sad and confused. I saw him standing there and turned around to ask him what was wrong even though I knew: Al had just told him to tell me that my new shirt wasn’t cool, that I was a 28 year-old man who should’ve outgrown fantasy and horror a long time ago, that I was creepy and odd and so unawesome that it was hopeless. I stood there a moment, gaping at this poor kid. There he was, his GAP dog shirt soaked in tears, and there I was, staring at him while my eyes started to well up to do the same onto my new Barb shirt. In that instant, I felt Al standing in the room too, a phantom whom I couldn’t see and didn’t want to see because if I did, I’d crumble. My middle school self and I stood there, silently, unsure of what to do. We both felt awkward and blundering. I peered into my middle school self’s sad, blue eyes, and I saw myself reflected in them. I blinked. He was gone. It was just an empty bathroom again. I felt my ears get hot and the pins behind the skin of my face start to poke around and heard my heart beating. I turned around and looked back at myself in the mirror. There I was. That’s me. Don’t I like me? When will I stop remembering and feeling so deeply? And perhaps it was the heat of the moment, or the fear of growing old with this chip on my shoulder, or merely because I decided I owed it to my younger self, but I thought: “I don’t know much, but suddenly I’ve decided Al can go fuck himself - because frankly, those GAP dog shirts were awesome, and this Barb shirt is awesome, and anyone who thinks otherwise is really dumb.” I kept the shirt on. I opened the bathroom door and ascended to the roof deck of my office in Chelsea and proceeded to host a solo photo shoot– and as I put on several self-timers to get the perfect shot and moved into different rays of light and twirled and laughed and danced up there in sync with the sky I glanced across West 19th Street and saw a bunch of people in the neighboring offices at Spotify gawking and cheering me on. I rallied my shirt off my chest with pinched fingers like it was a flag stitched to my chest, and I yelled, “STRANGER THINGS IS AWESOME!” except I don’t think they heard me. I didn’t care. I felt detached from Al completely. 28 years-old and for the first time in my life I gave myself permission to tip my hat to a former bully. All because of this dumb shirt. I left work later that evening, and within fifteen minutes of being out in public, three different people complimented me on my shirt and asked to take pictures of it. I felt badass and sexy and so fucking cool. Really, really fucking cool. Later that weekend I went to Boston with my boyfriend and was stopped several times and showered in more praise, like a celebrity. People took pictures with me and wanted to know where I got it because they all wanted one too. Today is my third soberversary, and as I sit here finishing up the processing of these thoughts, I wonder if Al will read this when I post it on September 16th, an otherwise insignificant date that marks three years of my sobriety. He and I are friends on Facebook. I’m sure he’s a nice guy now. Sometimes he "likes" my posts. I doubt he realizes the impact he’s made on me. I have no idea. But Al, if you’re reading this, you can totally borrow my Barb shirt sometime. I’m just not sure if you’re cool enough to wear it.

(Or if it even fits.)

[stopthistrain-bp]

#losingyou

tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good? we used to kiss all night, but now there’s just no use i don’t know why i fight it, clearly we are through tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good?

i know you waiting for the words that you can’t get from me just treat me good and baby i’ll give you the rest of me i’m not the one that you should be making your enemy i’m not the one that you should be making your enemy tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good? we used to kiss all night, but now there’s just no use i don’t know why i fight it, clearly we are through tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good? there’s nothing more, i know you takin’ it away from me i gave you everything and now’s there’s nothing left of me i’m not the one that you should be making your enemy i’m not the one that you should be making your enemy

tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good? we used to kiss all night, but now there’s just no use i don’t know why i fight it, clearly we are through tell me the truth boy:  (baby you know i tried) am i losing you for good? (can’t lose you for my life) tell me the truth boy: (baby you know i tried) am i losing you for good? (how could you waste my time?) we used to kiss all night, but now there’s just no use i don’t know why i fight it, clearly we are through tell me the truth boy: am i losing you for good?

[stopthistrain-bp]

How (What I Assumed Was) a Small Facebook Joke Turned Out to Be Not So Small, and How It Strangely Reignited a Small Sense of Hope Back into My Soul During a Totally Tumultuous Time

The first time I met Neil Dingow (indeed: his real last name) was at my friend Casey’s apartment. I was seated on a terribly old leather couch, and as I recall, Casey, our friend Katherine, and I were playing Mario Party; or we were watching soccer; or rather, Casey was watching soccer, and Katherine and I were not paying attention. I don’t remember. All I know is that we were parked wide-eyed in front of a television screen when Neil sulked through the door. At the time, Casey made house in our friend Jon’s apartment which had been passed down to him by his grandmother. The building also happens to be a project on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and the yellow-tinged, cinderblock hallways smell like urine and pot, paint peeling under cheaply lit ceilings covered in crackling fluorescent bulbs, half of which are burnt out. Oftentimes, the buzzer into the apartment didn’t work, and the boys of 583 Amsterdam would hurl their keys out the living room window, almost directly above the building’s front door, to entering visitors below. I myself entered the building in such a dignified manner on multiple occasions– and as far as I remember, that’s precisely how Neil Dingow entered the room when I first laid eyes on him. He wore a black, flat-brimmed cap upon his head, backward, with an original Star Wars logo threaded into its front, gleaming that famous yellow that everyone has come to know and adore, as I would come to know and adore Neil. 

However, it was not to be an easygoing initial meeting; in fact, he left after only a short visit, and I remember thinking, “This guy SUCKS.” He was sort of rude (though it could be argued as severely sarcastic), if not altogether jarring and unappealing, to say the least. Irreverent, quick to judge, and clearly too smart for his own good - and I didn’t like him. Not one bit. Little did I know that my initial dislike for Neil manifested itself a false barrier that I had bricked up because I felt threatened by him, though he felt so familiar to me somehow. That remarkable distaste, as I caught on later, spitefully existed because it was as if I was watching a wiser, smarter, funnier version of myself live and breathe right in front of me, and in my unsettled composure, I was completely rattled by that feeling. We hung out a few more times, and I warmed up, slowly, to his uncomfortably similar essence, but I always kept a safe distance.

Per contra, that quickly changed following an acting gig I took in Boston for a couple of months in the spring of 2012-- whereupon I would return to NYC without a housing situation. Around the time of my return, one of Neil’s roommates was headed out on a contract of his own, so I inherited his room, a cozy closet of a living space that flaunted a curtain for a bedroom door (but featured its own bathroom?) In the ten short months that I shacked up in that Harlem flat on West 147th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue with Neil, his cousin Danny, and their friend Tim, I not only found the best roommate I’d ever had, but I also unveiled one of my favorite humans on the planet. I learned that Neil was like my long-lost twin (although a few years my senior, a fact in which I still love to remind him of whenever possible.) We shared similar tastes in movies (horror) and humor (sarcasm), wrestled with similar demons (creatively, personally, socially), and found solace in one another as we’d identified similar upbringings with perfectly polite, perfectly white, perfectly God-fearing families. At one point Neil’s mother Eileen even remarked on a Facebook photo, “Blake, who’s your daddy??” as if to say Neil and I shared similar looks.

In May of 2013, Neil and Katherine and I decided we wanted to live together in a place of our own-- so at the end of the Harlem lease, we moved to Washington Heights onto Riverside Drive, where the three of us shared a year of what I will always believe was magic. We struggled, hard, each of us in his or her own way, daunted with the privileged task of being twenty-somethings in the biggest and loneliest city on the East Coast, the way so many hopeful kids do when they parachute themselves into the center of the great, wide, confusing, and wonderful City of New York. Katherine had us help her to smudge the apartment to conquer her sadness over a stupid, stupid boy, and she quietly considered her options as an actor and an artist. I quit drinking, under the watchful, loving eyes of the two of my loving and patient roommates, and began my true journey to self-discovery. Neil slowly owned up and opened up to his fears of dating– and his fears of failure (and what it would do to him if it happened), a conversation I never imagined that I would have with him, seeing as a major difference between he and I is that I’m always down to loudmouth share how I’m feeling, and he is not. The three of us shared a space in which we nurtured each other into our individual moments of vivid clarity about what we wanted in life and how we were going to get it. Katherine left for graduate school in Boston at the end of the year, and Neil and I stayed, two more years, until my situation shifted, my needs altered, and I decided I wanted space and sunlight again, so I moved to Queens and left Neil on Riverside Drive, to hold down the fort in the best apartment I’ve ever lived. 

Part of the joy in living with these two hatched itself in the form of Katherine and I taking each and every second to make Neil’s life a complete hell. We played pranks on him constantly: scratched at his door while he tried to sleep, left surprise gifts for him in his bedsheets, screeched his name at the top of our lungs during early morning hours. A large chunk of my friendship with Neil developed because I so enjoy making him feel uncomfortable in public situations. He absolutely despises being the center of attention around strangers, so I have stolen many opportune moments on subways and in restaurants and out on the street to ensure that I seek out and draw attention to Neil and me. He is also a blast to torment on the internet.

I moved to Queens about ten days ago, and I had been desperately missing Neil from afar, so right before a lunch break at work a week ago, I drafted a small Facebook prank, my way of saying “HI I’M THINKING ABOUT YOU!” I opened up a new relationship tab in the “About Me” section on my Facebook profile, selected “Engaged,” and when prompted to enter one of my friend’s names on Facebook, I typed: N-E-I-L (space) D-I-N-G-O-W. I pulled back and stared at the screen a moment.

I pondered, “Nobody will take this seriously, right? Everyone knows Neil is my best friend but definitely not my lover, right? ‘Cause they know how weird it would be for two brothers to get married, right? Right.” I hit “Post,” giggled aloud at the sight of the new Facebook Feed engagement announcement, and left my desk to go get lunch with my friend Shannon. We walked to this place called Essen on Sixth Avenue and W. 22nd Street, grabbed some food, and stood in line. As I waited impatiently, I checked my phone, staring up at me were several notifications from my Facebook app. I went bug-eyed. In the short time it took Shannon and I to walk from W. 19th Street and 6th Ave. to Essen, a mere three blocks away, over 100 people had already “Liked” the status. By the time we returned to our desks at work, the number had climbed to 150. By the time I finished my lunch, the number was well over 200. Neil texted me:

Over the next couple hours, my phone went nuts. I was stunned. Somehow, I thought people would know it was a joke. I really did. I was at a total loss as the number of congratulations on the fabricated announcement rose higher and higher. I had assumed that people would see the buffoonery in it– and a couple people did, actually: I approached a (slightly inaccurate) calculation based solely on the number of people who selected the “Haha” face, as well as people who made some sort of clear sarcastic remark, and roughly 2% of the people who reached out figured it was all a prank. The rest? Nada. Texts flooded into my phone. One of my coworkers even burst out, “Uhhhhh… Blake?!!!? Congratulations!!!” Much to his dismay, I told him the truth about the status update. He was dumbfounded and began to scold me. Then another coworker joined in, and together, they reprimanded me: “People take love very seriously Blake.” I thought myself, “Well, so do I! I’m a romantic! I love love! I love nothing more than love!!!” I was so taken by the number of people who gave their thumbs ups or hearts of approval, and I couldn’t comprehend how a simple bit of mischief had morphed into such a prosperous outpouring of support for two dudes supposedly revealing their intentions to get hitched.

Meanwhile, as the news of my false engagement spread to my meager Facebook family, so did the international news of Alton Sterling’s murder from the previous day, as would the news of Philado Castile’s murder later that evening. That night I slept, and I awoke in the morning to over 700 reactions to my fake announcement - and to the confirmed news about the cruel deaths of two innocent black men, senselessly killed in cold blood for not a single reason the video evidence of each documented case can suggest: except for the color of their skin. Horrific (but sadly unsurprising) news that, once again, shed light onto the critical state of racism in the United States – mere weeks after the massacre on Pulse Night Club in Orlando, in which 49 humans were assassinated because of their sexual orientation, slaughtered with a semi-automatic weapon designed for war because they chose love. Love, like that of Philando Castile’s fiance Diamond, who filmed his slow and torturous death while her daughter, only four years old, sat in the backseat and watched, unable to fully understand what was happening because she’s four; or love like that, offered to Alton Sterling unconditionally by son Cameron as he cried out for his late father on television screens around the world as Alton’s wife offered this: “As a mother, I have now been forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father.” Love, like that of each of the families of the five fallen officers in Dallas, once again, killed at the hands of purebred anger.

Yet somehow in my ignorance, I was genuinely surprised that my family/friends/colleagues/acquaintances were looking to celebrate something as dynamite and pure as an open declaration of love? Amidst all of the hate and turmoil that sprints rampantly through the corridors of our self-designated “greatest nation on Earth,” “land of the free, home of the brave,” “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?” How foolish of me. How totally petulant and ignorant and insensitive of me to imagine that somehow this joke wouldn’t read as a joke at all, but rather, an innate spark of hope in these dark times that have rapidly been weaving themselves into the fabric of our young nation. Because that’s exactly what we are: a toddler. On the grand scale, America is one of the youngest countries on the planet, with not even 250 years under our belt; and like the young and defiant child we are, we parade around our Declaration of Independence and Constitution as if they’re Holy Scriptures, delivered to us from an all-loving being on-high who personally selected us to show the rest of the world just how good life can be.

I have news for you: we’re not the greatest country on earth, and shame on us for thinking that we are. For us to award ourselves that highest stamp of self-approval is nothing short of ignorant and willful, like a population of false prophets pretending on the surface that we have answers when subconsciously we’re too scared to admit that the ideals and values we hold so dearly are deeply rooted in disturbing, anti-progressive ideas like racism, sexism, greed, intolerance, among others. This is not to say our country doesn’t have great aspects to it. We do. Many. But we just as many negatives as we do positives, and our way of life is not the sole answer. The first draft of this meditation featured a long, drawn-out argument with my opinions as to why we are the way we are, but in retrospect as I read back over my self-righteous chimes that guns ARE the problem and racism IS a problem, I realized that I was missing the point of what I had initially set out to do: to recognize and focalize the hope during a particularly crap time in a nation on the brink of what could be the most disastrous election we’ve witnessed yet. It is obvious that the entire country is angry. All you have to do is look at the distasteful comment wars on political Facebook posts to see it firsthand (comment wars in which I have, shamefully, taken part.) It is clear that we feel, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, or somewhere in-between all those basic and nondescript identifiers, unheard and unspoken for. And more importantly, it is egregiously evident that we are tired of waking up each morning to the news of more dead people. While I fundamentally cannot engage with people who think that their Second Amendment rights are in question, simply because one “side” is calling for harder background checks, I can, in fact empathize with any American who feels as lost as ever before after the past two months have unraveled into the bloody mess that it has. While I cannot reasonably converse with people who don’t believe racism is still a huge issue in our country, I can empathize with everyone who wants to the ground we stand on to become the foundation of greatness we say we are.

And so, if one thing’s for certain, I believe that the faith in a better America, in light of my faux engagement to one of the coolest people I know, served as a tiny, tiny beacon of hope in an otherwise hopeless, lightless time. Love: that is the answer. Don’t turn away from your neighbors, even if they’re different from you. Look at them. Talk to them. People aren’t scary. People are pretty incredible. Hate is not inherent; hate is taught, carefully. I believe this. I believe this sincerely, and in a time when our country is on the rocks, we must choose love, compassion, and humanity. We must remember Confucius: “It is easy to hate, and it is difficult to love.”

So. That being said:

Neil Dingow? Wanna get married?

Just kidding. You’re gross. Just kidding. I love you. This much.

[stopthistrain-bp]

Chelsea (You’re Still Here)

There’s been change in Chelsea The weather’s been stormy all year Encounters with the wealthy Citizens are plenty, my dear (That much is clear) And I look for you down here From Sixth Avenue right to the Pier Though my eyes drop a tear While my hands sweat with fear In your absence No, it doesn’t make sense You’re still here Yes, you’re still here... When I call out your name down here Seventh Avenue then off to the Pier Oh my head tries to steer What my heart seems to hear It’s your absence That’s a small, false pretense There’s a change in Chelsea The sun’s acted foolish all year Neither poor nor wealty Citizens have seen it, my dear (That much is clear) But I’d swear you’re still down here On Eighth Avenue then straight to the Pier Though my eyes lose a tear And my hands swell with fear Oh, my dear It’s so clear You’re still here

[stopthistrain-bp]

When We Were Young

Let me photograph you in this light In case it is the last time That we might be exactly like we were Before we realized... ...oh, I'm so mad I'm getting old It makes me reckless Congrats on these lyrics Tobias Jesso, Jr. and Adele. They're pretty much perfect.